


Taught The Sun

by MayQueen517



Series: Pacific Rim Tumblr prompts [7]
Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Everybody Lives, Friendship, Gen, Male-Female Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2019-02-27 22:20:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13257792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MayQueen517/pseuds/MayQueen517
Summary: He tunes back into Mako, her patient smile familiar and warm as Raleigh stretches his legs out into the sunshine.





	Taught The Sun

**Author's Note:**

> Uh...hello there! It's been a hot minute since I've written anything, honestly. 2017 was a hell of a year and I've been hit with a mac truck of inspiration following the Pacific Rim Secret Santa fic exchange. SOOOO.
> 
> I opened up my tumblr for prompts. I have a few others that I plan to post here, but this one - for enbywankenobi on Tumblr - grew a life of it's own.
> 
> The prompt was "Sunshine" and the song ended up being Saint, Don't You Lie by New Sweden, which is where the title comes from.
> 
> ANYWAYS! Enjoy! <3

Sometime after the first evacuations to safe zones away from the coast, it became the popular thing to see artificial beaches and their like being made. It often wasn't much; usually an existing lake got a beach added on and that was that. There are others, though. 

This one, close to the last stop of the Victory Tour, is the centerpiece of a high-end hotel. It's the big draw - one of the largest man-made beaches in any of the designated safe zones.

It seems decadent and wrong, now that Raleigh looks at it. The thing is, really, it isn't the real thing. It looks real and feels real but it's too perfect. Raleigh has been on too many beaches - before and after the Kaiju and the PPDC and everything else - and he looks down at the sand, wondering where the sea glass and the broken shells are. Where the shark teeth are and other things from the ocean. 

But this is a man-made beach and a man-made ocean. 

"Hey, what's that thing where it's real but not real?" he asks, looking over his shoulder, squinting in the sun.

"Uh, a delusion, Ray?" Chuck says with a scoff. He's under a massive umbrella, a concession to his doctors who say he's still too close to recuperation to be out in the full sun of the day. Mako scowls, swatting him as Raleigh snorts, flipping him off casually. 

They still don't always see eye-to-eye, but shared trauma is what it is and almost dying is a hell of a support group these days. 

"No, jackass," Raleigh says, almost fond, "That thing where something only looks like the real thing."

"Beats me," Chuck says, dodging the next swat from Mako, throwing an arm around her with a smug little shit grin that Raleigh will never admit he likes. "Smarty-pants here might know," he teases as Mako laughs, jabbing an elbow into his ribs. Chuck hisses a laugh as he scuttles from her, tickling her in retaliation.

Laughing, Raleigh dodges the sweeping leg that Chuck tries to use to take him off of his feet. This lighter, more playful Chuck isn't what Raleigh would have expected but he can recognize that being twenty-one and knowing that you're going to have to sacrifice yourself for the good of the world doesn't lend itself to letting anyone get close. 

With a well-placed knee to his back, Mako ends up perched on Chuck's legs, beaming. Chuck laughs, flopping back onto the sand and Raleigh wonders how much of the real beaches Chuck remembers. He wonders if Mako ever went to the seaside with her parents or if the Marshall and Jake ever took her to another one of these man-made beaches. 

"Simulacrum," Mako says breathlessly. Raleigh blinks at her as Chuck snorts, sitting up and there are grains of sand stuck to him. Raleigh thinks about brushing them off and thinks better of it in the same moment. He tunes back into Mako, her patient smile familiar and warm as Raleigh stretches his legs out into the sunshine.

"What?"

"A simulacrum is what you were thinking of, Raleigh," Mako says patiently. Raleigh nods slowly.

"You guys ever go to the beach? Before, I mean."

"Mate," Chuck says, always ready to banter but this time he sounds amused, "I'm from Australia."

"I went once with my parents to the coast. It wasn't like this, though," Mako offers like a concession. Raleigh nods, mostly to himself. He can't think of the beach and not think of Alaska - cold sweeps through him despite the sunshine and he struggles out of the memory to sympathetic expressions.

The three of them let silence ripple through them, like the wind over the water before them. Less an ocean and more of a lake, Raleigh thinks.

"Yancy used to take me beach combing," Raleigh says, the chimes of nearby wind chimes lulling him into the memory. "Used to try and always find sea glass. Never found a lot but Yancy. Yancy was great at it. Had an eye for it."

Raleigh doesn't look over to either Chuck or Mako, abruptly wishing he hadn't said anything when the silence stretches on. Yancy is always at the back of his mind; Raleigh knows that some people call it ghosting, but that feels impersonal. He thinks of Yancy because he misses him; as if he lost a tooth and the socket has yet to close over. He doesn't think it ever will. He doesn't know if he wants it to go away - but talking about Yancy usually garners one of two reactions.

The first, one he can handle and has learned to handle, is the awkward sympathy. People who don't know how to respond. Those who didn't know Yancy but knew of Yancy. 

The second, and his least favorite, are those who try to counter with something that is worse.

Of course, neither Mako nor Chuck are like that. They understand better than most. The loss of Tamsin is still fresh for Mako and the threat of losing the Marshall is a stalled terror, as he recovers. Chuck, Raleigh knows, understands the loss better than some. 

Raleigh thinks to his therapist's patient expression, the gentle enouragement to talk about Yancy finally. He wonders what his therapist will have to say at their next session via video chat. 

"Yeah, Mum always collected sea glass. Bloody loved it," Chuck says suddenly, startling Raleigh and Mako. Raleigh crawls under the umbrella, skin feeling tight from the sun and the lassitude that steals over him makes the umbrella feel safe enough to talk about their losses. 

"Yeah?" Raleigh asks, feeling Mako's soft hand on his own as she hands him a bottle of water. 

"Yeah," Chuck says, voice going thready as Raleigh scoots closer, letting their feet touch, "She had this one piece - looked like dog shit, to be honest, but when you held it up to the light, it was actually amber. My old man gave it to her on their first date. She had it with her when. Well."

Trailing off into nothing, Chuck looks over to his left, avoiding Raleigh and Mako's sympathetic expressions. Raleigh wonders if Chuck's processing his own therapy homework. 

Raleigh places his hand over Chuck's foot, pressing down so Chuck feels it through the scar tissue that cascades across both feet and legs. Chuck twitches his foot in response, tossing sand into Raleigh's lap, making Raleigh scowl, dusting himself off.

"I used to dig for cowries," Mako offers into the silence. She motions the general shape of the shell, looking over to Chuck and Raleigh watches Chuck smile just a little. 

"I was very small and it was right after a big storm, when we found the best shells," Mako says, a smile lighting her face and Raleigh thinks of Mako as a young girl running on a beach instead of away from Onibaba. "We would get hit on the ankle by all of the shells washing up. I still have one. My parents had the other one as well," she says, reaching for Chuck's hand.

Raleigh watches them, thinking over their friendship and his own friendship with them both. He wonders at what this victory tour would be without Chuck and Mako. He stops thinking about that, not wanting to think of another lonely beach.

Listening to Chuck and Mako talk and bicker, Raleigh lets himself fall back onto the towels spread over Mako's side of the umbrella. He pushes his feet into the sun-warmed sand, just outside of the border of shade and lets wind chimes and his friend's voices lull him to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on tumblr! [MayQueen517](mayqueen517.tumblr.com)


End file.
